


Countercontrol

by holograms



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Dom/sub Undertones, Light BDSM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:49:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew leaves; but he always comes back. He likes to think that it’s of his own accord. But then he thinks of those paintings of staircases with the optical illusion of the stairs going nowhere except winding into each other, going the same place again and again, and ultimately going nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Countercontrol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Countercontrol is behavior in which an individual has the knowledge that they are under social control of another, and therefore engage in a retaliating response to the aversive social control. That is — once one knows they under social control of another, the individual will oppose the attempts and either escape, attack, or resist to deny that control. (paraphrased by me, by books by BF Skinner)
> 
> Thank you to [person who I will name after reveals] for looking this over for me!

After the JVC performance, Andrew considers himself a rich man — not in the way of monetary wealth, but rich with fortune nonetheless. Music saturates his blood and success sings in his ears, the promise of more is on his lips, and the weight of Fletcher’s overwhelming praise consumes his soul. He has won.

He supposes that there might be something to be said about trials and tribulations, that he was being tested to see if his faith was true (and it is — in jazz; in himself; in _him_ ). He never truly gave up, never could—

But really, it’s an offense to think that it’s something predetermined, that Andrew had no part in it, because _he_ did it himself _._ He took his destiny in his own bloodied and blistered hands and shook it until it yielded, until everything that was holding him back fell away and left only open space for true greatness to inhabit. He is a country of his own making and of his own autonomy. His extended solo of _Caravan_ is the Declaration of Andrew Neiman. His triumph belongs to himself.

When he tells Fletcher this, Fletcher slaps him so hard his ears ring. 

It blindsides Andrew. “What the fuck was that for?”

“ _Who_ made you great?” Fletcher demands, his hand raised and poised to strike again. “Who plucked you up from the garbage and gave you another chance, even though I should have left you to rot?”

So that’s the game Fletcher wants to play.

Andrew clenches his jaw and bites his tongue to ease the sting in his cheek, and to distract from the sinking feeling in his chest. “You did, sir,” he says, because there’s nothing else can he say.

Fletcher’s hand falls from its ready-to-strike position, anger deescalating. “Good.” He grabs Andrew’s shoulder and squeezes, a mix of a pretense of friendliness and a demonstration of dominance. “As long as we have that understanding.” 

Andrew doesn’t make that same mistake again.

 

 

There’s no question that they aren’t to be aligned as one; they fall in sync effortlessly. They never negotiate the terms of their partnership, but the gist of it is: Andrew drums and does everything that Fletcher tells him, and Fletcher makes sure Andrew doesn’t fuck up.

Oh, and he torments Andrew. 

Some things don’t change. 

Andrew is satisfied, as long as Fletcher is.

 

  

But some things _do_ change.

Andrew is not afraid anymore.

Not of anything (the only thing he fears is losing everything, which could never happen, so it hardly crosses his mind).

He’s not afraid of failure — it’s not an option — and he’s not afraid of what his father will say and he’s not afraid to die and most of all, he’s not afraid of Fletcher.

Sure, Fletcher is a monograph of the terror that still sometimes finds Andrew in his dreams, a contagion that crawls into his subconscious and nests there. Fletcher never minces his words, is quick to strike Andrew for a misstep, and is sure to continue to situate himself as the representation of what drives Andrew. Fletcher’s praise is the carrot; his discipline is the stick.

But Andrew discovers that most of Fletcher is idle threats. He supposes that Fletcher has no need to act on them because Andrew will do exactly as he commands. He has established _just_ enough authority to keep Andrew in line, to where Andrew can almost relax in his presence.

It’s not how it’s supposed to go. Fletcher had said they have an _understanding._ Fletcher can’t abandon that part of their arrangement — Andrew finds that he needs Fletcher to be an awful bastard for it work.

So Andrew gives him a reason for him to be.

“What are you going to do, kick me out? Not teach me anymore?” Andrew asks one day, seething mad — and he grows even more furious the longer he waits for Fletcher to respond.

But Fletcher says nothing. He only shrugs his shoulders and stares at Andrew blankly, as if unfazed by his sudden outburst. 

Andrew doesn’t like it when Fletcher is indecisive about him. Fletcher is supposed to have strong opinions of Andrew; for him to have any less makes Andrew feel like he’s uninterested in him. And that, he cannot tolerate. Fletcher can’t jerk him around and expect him to do every single fucking thing he wants, but then give nothing in return.

“You wouldn’t really, would you?” Andrew asks. “Get rid of me?”

Fletcher sighs, and says, “Andrew, stop being such a whiny bitch. I don’t have time for this.” 

So it _is_ all talk — he won’t ever make Andrew leave. It makes Andrew wonder what else Fletcher isn’t honest about.

“That’s what I thought!” Andrew says, even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Fletcher blinks at him, and continues to do nothing. Andrew kicks over the bass drum, shouts, “Fuck you!” and storms out of the room and slams Fletcher’s apartment door behind him without another word.

He expects Fletcher to follow him. He stands in the lobby of Fletcher’s apartment building for thirty minutes, waiting for Fletcher to come down and snatch him by the neck and drag him upstairs and give him the beating of a lifetime for his disobedience.

But he doesn’t.

 

 

Andrew has never been patient, so the wait for Fletcher to come to him is agonizing. He fears that maybe he fucked everything up and that Fletcher isn’t coming to get him because he doesn’t want him anymore, and that thought makes Andrew sick.

He’s restless. He doesn’t eat, and pills make him even more paranoid. He hardly sleeps, but when he does, his last waking thought is of Fletcher, and when he wakes Fletcher is the first thing on his mind. Sleep would be a welcome change — it’d be nice to be unconscious, to not have to think about the choices he’s made — but Fletcher finds his way into his mind there too, infiltrating his dreams and preying on him.

 

 

The stalemate lasts four days.

Fletcher seems unsurprised when Andrew shows up outside his door. Andrew isn’t sure what he expected, but it isn’t Fletcher grinning and saying, “Andrew! I’ve missed you, come inside.”

Andrew almost weeps with relief.

After he stumbles inside Fletcher’s apartment and eases onto Fletcher’s couch, Fletcher offers him a drink, which Andrew eagerly accepts. He needs something to quiet his nerves and the nausea that’s rising in his throat.

Fletcher slides next to him and puts the glass in his hand — Andrew notes that it’s filled with the expensive whiskey that Fletcher never shares with him — and he continues to grin at Andrew. There’s something shining in his eyes that Andrew can’t name.

Andrew knows that he should count his blessings, but he has to know. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Fletcher doesn’t answer, instead he says, “Drink,” and taps Andrew’s wrist. Andrew wants to say more, but Fletcher keeps looking at him insistently, so he does as he suggests. He takes a long drink of the liquor, his gaze meeting Fletcher’s over the rim of the glass.

“Good,” Fletcher says, and takes the glass away from Andrew and places it on the table in front of them. “So did you have fun on your break?”

Andrew isn’t sure what to say. He didn’t have fun at all, in fact he was _miserable_ , but he doesn’t want Fletcher to know that — but there’s also a part of him that wants Fletcher to know how inadequate he felt without him. 

He settles for a shrug and a, “Not really.”

Fletcher tilts his head, frowns. “Oh? I’m sorry to hear that, Andrew.”

“Thanks?” The way Fletcher is looking at him makes him feel uneasy, so Andrew falls back on a social interaction that he knows with him. He’s compelled by the overwhelming need to apologize to him, so he starts, “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see what you’d do if I left, but I—”

When Fletcher smacks him, it’s more of what Andrew has been expecting.

“You thought you knew better?” Fletcher asks, and he hits Andrew again with a practiced slap to the side of his face, and it’s amazing how quickly the illusion of his nicety evaporates to leave his true self exposed. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he says, and there’s an implication there.

Andrew says, “I wanted a part in this.”

“You thought that you could control this?” Fletcher asks. There is a moment of reverence as Fletcher looks at Andrew, as if he’s impressed that Andrew could come up with such a scheme to try to gain equal footing in their relationship. Andrew likes the thought that Fletcher can still find new aspects of him, and he can’t help but smile.

Fletcher makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a growl, and he grabs a fistful of Andrew’s hair and tugs him towards him.

“Do you think this is funny?” Fletcher asks, and holds Andrew still with the grip in his hair to hit him with his other hand. “Do you?”

Andrew licks his lip, and he tastes blood. He catches Fletcher watching him.

“You’re overreacting,” Andrew says. “Again.” He tries to free himself from Fletcher’s hold, but Fletcher won’t budge. “Could you, like, cool it?” 

“This is nothing.”

“Says the guy punishing me.”

“ _Punishing_?” Fletcher says, and Andrew immediately wishes he could take it back, because he knows Fletcher well enough to know that things are about to go from bad, to worse. “That’s not punishment, I’ll show you punishment,” Fletcher says, and, well.

It’s one threat that Fletcher keeps.

Andrew isn’t disappointed. Because the frightening truth is that Andrew prefers it like this. _Likes_ it even; he finds himself gasping when Fletcher berates him and snarls insults in his ear, and he leans into his body, anticipating the next level of Fletcher's punishment — maliciously composed touches. Each hit is a new promise of a bruise left behind, a mark of Fletcher’s gratification with him, and the thought of being a map of black-and-blue cartography sends a shiver down his spine.

Fletcher notices, of course; he never misses anything. He capitalizes on it, leans in close and says, “You’re fucking sick.”

“I know,” Andrew says. Denial is pointless. He’s had Fletcher’s attention for his musical performance, but Andrew has wanted something else from him and it’s caused him all kinds of confusion, but now, he knows exactly what it is. He knows he shouldn’t, knows that it might make things worse for him, but he just can’t — he knows what Fletcher’s affirmation is like and he hungers for more, in a twisted evolved form. 

“I want—” Andrew begins, but Fletcher cuts him off, “I don’t give a shit about what you want.”

It’s a good thing Andrew is not easily discouraged.

Andrew tilts his head back and licks his lips again — the metallic taste is still there — and asks, “Then what do _you_ want?”

The question hangs in the air. Fletcher says, “You disgust me,” but he says it the same way he tells Andrew that his playing is horrible when Andrew knows it’s only to force him to work harder.

It’s a terrible decision, Andrew decides, but it’s his, so he kisses him.

Fletcher responds by deepening the kiss, thrusting his tongue into Andrew’s mouth as he pushes on Andrew’s shoulders and pins him against the couch. Andrew lets out a throaty whine and his entire body goes lax, focusing on the weight of Fletcher on top of him. It’s what he wanted, he  _took_ it from Fletcher, and he’s won. Again.

But it ends, too soon — Fletcher pulls away. Andrew tries to catch his mouth his again, but Fletcher shakes his head.

“Let’s get back to work, you have a gig next week,” Fletcher says, and he leaves Andrew sitting on his couch and half hard in his jeans.

  

 

A couple weeks later, Andrew leaves again. Then once more the week after that, and five days after his return, he disappears again.

He doesn’t stay gone for long, just long enough to prove a point. It’s a power balance thing. His absences are the only thing that makes Fletcher angry enough to display a fit of passion. And it’s worth it — every time Andrew straggles back to Fletcher, Andrew can expect a few hits before it leads to them thrusting against other on the couch and putting their mouths on their lips, face, neck, anywhere to taste.

Andrew leaves; but he always comes back.

He likes to think that it’s of his own accord. But then he thinks of those paintings of staircases with the optical illusion of the stairs going nowhere except winding into each other, going the same place again and again, and ultimately going nowhere.

 

 

It continues, until one day when Andrew is back from a leave of only a day and a half and they’re spread out on Fletcher’s living room floor — their fight was particularly violent this time — and they have their hands shoved in each other’s pants and wrapped around their cocks. 

“Enough of this,” Fletcher says, but he doesn’t stop his motions. He twists his hand on an upstroke, drawing a sweet gasp from Andrew. “I’m serious.”

Andrew’s eyes flutter open and find Fletcher’s. “What do you mean?” he asks, fearing the worst — he knew it had to end someday. Maybe Fletcher feels duped that he purposely goes against him to get more from him. “This stuff?”

Fletcher lets out a sigh, frustrated, the special one he reserves for Andrew. “No. I mean, enough of this bullshit,” he says against Andrew’s skin, biting at the curve of his neck. “I just wanna fuck.”

Andrew doesn’t have to be asked twice — he whines out, “Yes, _please,_ ” and when Fletcher grabs his arm and drags him into his bedroom, he says, “I thought you’d never ask.”

 

 

Andrew strips himself of his clothes before Fletcher has a chance to tell him to, and he gets on his fours on top of the heather-gray comforter on Fletcher’s bed, ready.

“Eager, aren’t you?” Fletcher asks and there’s a half-smile attached to it that Andrew recognizes without having to turn his head to see. 

Andrew doesn’t know what he is. He stays silent as Fletcher moves around the room and instead of focusing on of the sound of clothing falling to the floor and the rummaging of the contents of drawers and wondering about what’s about to happen, he concentrates on his breathing.

He almost has his breathing regulated when the bed dips with Fletcher’s weight. He turns around, and sees that Fletcher is naked and kneeling behind him, and Andrew quickly takes in the image — his defined shoulders, a flush spread on his chest, his cock hard and standing up towards his stomach.

“Face the wall,” Fletcher orders, and gives a smack on Andrew’s ass to reinforce it.

Andrew complies, and looks forward again. All that work on steadying his breath is shot to hell — his breath catches in his throat with the feeling of Fletcher’s hands on his ass, and he chokes on it a few moments later when Fletcher presses a slick-wet finger against his hole and slips it inside. Andrew whines and arches his back — it feels strange, intruding and not entirely pleasurable, but intriguing nonetheless. 

It’s what he wants, Andrew reminds himself.

He goes along with it, and as Fletcher slips more fingers in and curves them up to press inside, it starts to feel nice, very nice. Andrew rocks back on Fletcher’s hand, forgetting the shame he may have felt in the beginning, and lets out a moan so lewd that it even surprises himself. 

“Enthusiasm always looks good on you,” Fletcher says, and brushes his fingertips against the place that makes Andrew jolt. “Always ready to give it up.” He leans forward and bites at Andrew’s hip. “Ready for more?” 

“Yes, please,” Andrew says, _begs_.

Fletcher hardly waits for Andrew’s consent. He removes his fingers and Andrew finds himself missing something filling him. Andrew has never been patient and he isn’t going to start now, so he takes a chance and he looks over his shoulder at Fletcher. 

What he sees makes his stomach twist with unexpected arousal — Fletcher is rolling a condom on his cock, and then he starts slicking himself with lube, giving himself long strokes base to tip. Andrew is caught between looking at Fletcher’s hand working himself and Fletcher’s flushed, severe face. He’s preparing for him, Andrew knows, and the thought of what Fletcher is about to do to him makes his dick throb even more.

Andrew must make a noise, because Fletcher’s eyes flit up to his and he frowns. He lunges forward and pushes at Andrew’s head, forcing him to look down at the mattress.

“You keep breaking rules, Andrew,” Fletcher growls, and the heat of his words are in Andrew’s ear as Fletcher leans over Andrew’s back while he keeps one hand at his neck. “What am I to do with you?”

There are many things that Andrew could suggest, but he has only one thought at the moment. Fletcher’s dick is resting against the cleft of Andrew’s ass, and Andrew rubs against it, up and down, in a slow motion that produces a strangled groan from Fletcher. 

“Fuck me,” Andrew says.

“Bossy,” Fletcher says, and Fletcher grabs Andrew by the hip, and then pushes in, the head of his cock first, then more, until there’s the slow drag out before Fletcher thrusts into him again.

Tears form in the corners of Andrew’s eyes at the burn of being stretched, but he dares not let Fletcher know; there’s the fear that he may stop, which he doesn’t want at all. He thinks that Fletcher knows that it’s uncomfortable because he isn’t being totally brutal — unlike their romps on the couch.

He focuses on aligning his breathing with Fletcher’s, the feeling of Fletcher’s thighs pressed against the back of his legs, and how it hurts less with every push in. Eventually, Andrew acclimates, like he does to everything, and starts giving back, fucking himself on Fletcher’s cock, taking in as much as he can. Fletcher matches his new pace and increases it, speeding up and sharply snapping his hips forward in a way that makes Andrew abandons any semblance of leading and leaves him writhing beneath him.

Fletcher fucks like he conducts — precise, with vigor, every instance a show of supremacy. Andrew didn’t expect anything less — for everything Andrew does, Fletcher has a counter measure.

Just when Andrew is about to start begging for it, Fletcher wraps his hand around Andrew’s dick and starts stroking him and quick, efficient tugs.

“Is this what you wanted?” Fletcher breathes in Andrew’s ear, but Andrew can’t answer because he’s coming in a blaze that rips through him, and after that Fletcher pins him down to the mattress and fucks him so hard that his words come out as segmented grunts that die on his tongue.

  

 

There’s no affection between them afterward — Andrew lies on his stomach, hoping that Fletcher will let him sleep there because he’s too tired and too sore and too blissed out to move. 

He’s aware of Fletcher shifting next to him, but Andrew adheres to the belief of he doesn’t look at him, he won’t exist.

Fletcher speaking ruins the illusion.

“When’s the next time you’re going to pretend to leave?” Fletcher asks, and Andrew opens his eyes to see Fletcher’s unblinking glare. “Because then I can plan around your fickle, wishy-washy bullshit.”

Andrew almost laughs, because they both know that Andrew would never leave, it’s only a pretense of opposition.


End file.
